


The Ghost Of You

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [10]
Category: Class (TV 2016), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Grief, Loss, Memory Loss, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 23:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8346955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Oswald, C. It was embossed neatly in gold upon the memorial board, enough to catch the Doctor's eye and throw him off his stride. He'd held off falling apart at first, knowing that there were more pressing concerns to hand, but once he's back inside the TARDIS, the reality of what he's lost hits him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xXdreameaterXx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXdreameaterXx/gifts).



> This was loosely inspired by a conversation between myself and [xXdreameaterXx](http://archiveofourown.org/users/xXdreameaterXx) last night on Tumblr, as well as by the events of the first episode of Class. Here may be spoilers, be warned.

As he closed the doors of the TARDIS behind him, he felt both of his hearts clench in synchronicity. He’d seen her name, embossed onto the dark wood in neat, inch-high gold letters. He’d seen it, and he’d had to keep going, because he couldn’t fall apart in front of the students. They needed him to be strong; they needed him to be the leader that they had heard him to be; they needed the Time Lord Victorious, not the Time Lord in Pieces. So he’d kept talking, trying to grasp at the straws of the things she had once taught him. Be upbeat. Smile. Make jokes – but not at the expense of others. He might have gone against that last one, but he was certain that if she had been there, she wouldn’t have blamed him. 

He wanted to sink to the floor of the console room and clutch his knees to his chest in an approximate attempt at holding together what had been shattered into a million fragments. He wanted to weep, and beat his fists on the floor as he complained for the thousandth time that life wasn’t fair. He wanted – in that instant – to be human, as human as she had been. But the thought of her was cloying – what little he could think of her, at least. The faded memories of her that he tried to grasp at, ephemeral as smoke, seemed to overwhelm him given his locality. Her school. He remembered that much – remembered being a caretaker alongside her – and thus he had felt his hearts clench as he stepped out of the TARDIS moments ago. It didn’t matter who he was saving, it didn’t matter what good he was doing – being there had been accompanied by a sinking sense of dread and a gaping feeling of loss. It went beyond the destruction of the old buildings he had so loved – the worn, faded architecture that had been so imbued with artron energy – and struck him to the core. She should have been there. She should have been at his side, chastising him for his carelessness and his willingness to involve what were little more than children in something _she_ had – at times – found overwhelming.

He closed his eyes and tried to call to mind her voice. Imagined her words, telling him not to place such a mantle on those so young. He had believed that they could handle it, but then he had believed that she could, and now she was commemorated on that board alongside Danny. He knew enough about humanity to know that the missing were not commemorated, and thus in that instant –surrounded by teenagers who were full of promise that she would never get to see – he had lost all hope. Coal Hill was no longer a beacon of curiosity to him – it was a grave marker, a place that would only serve to remind him of her loss. It was a site that would be marked as the place that he had to give up on that last spark of optimism. 

For if she lived, she would be here, that much he was certain of. She would have come back to the place and the people she adored – would have come back to help them, to impart the knowledge gleaned through years of study and further years spent at his side. She would have risked that much, he knew. He could not recall her smile, but he could recall how she loved danger, loved the taste and smell of it, and thus he knew in that instant that in breaking her commitment to her school she had broken the commitment to continue to live after he had done what he did. She was no more, and he felt a part of him die with her. 

The thought of her and the weight of her was tangible, and he disengaged the handbrake with a silent prayer that being away from the proximity of a place she had so adored would relieve him of a modicum of his suffering. As the TARDIS span into the vortex however, he felt only an increased sense of grief that he could not hope to comprehend; each light-year placed between London and himself both alleviating and invoking his suffering further. He longed to be back there, but he longed to be there at her side, with her making him laugh in that easy, gentle way she so often had. He sighed deeply, wishing he could picture her face, wishing he could recollect her voice and reconstruct the way she had spoken to him, but there was nothing there. A sense of warmth, alongside a heavy sense of loss, and the memory of a love that had burned quietly in his hearts. 

He thought back to seeing her name on the board alongside Danny’s. Neatly embossed beside each other, a testament to what they had shared and to what the school had lost when they had both been claimed far too young. 

_Pink, R. D._

_Oswald, C._

It didn’t seem enough to him. She was more than words, more than just a reductive set of letters on wood. Wood was so transient and impermanent; liable to rot or burn or wither away in the same way that she had. He smiled bitterly to himself then, knowing that wood reflected her humanity perfectly. It would not last, and it would fade. He had _known_ that she would fade, had known that he would lose her, and yet he let himself think that eternity beckoned to them. He had lied to himself and to her, and he had lost her, and now all that remained was her name, etched into the collective memory of a place she had so adored. 

Of course, there was undoubtedly a grave. A site where her name was carved into stone, as-yet unmarked by the passage of time that had so damaged her. It would weather, and it would wear down, and yet still he would live on unrelentingly, unable to just let go – his punishment, he supposed; a future devoid of her. She had made up so much of his past, and yet his future without her seemed uncertain. He considered, for one manic moment, going to her graveside and laying a wreath, laying anything, to attempt to connect with her one final time. To try and seek solace beside where her body lay. But he had seen her die before; had seen her grave before; and he knew that seeing it for the final time would be his undoing. Before there had been hope. Before there had been the promise of the unlocking of a riddle. This time there was only a sense of finality in the thought of her grave, and he felt himself reflexively flinch away from the notion of saying goodbye to her in any sense. He needed to run, he needed to keep himself busy, because to dwell on Clara Oswald was to dwell on an idea half formed, a dream half remembered, but a dream he was certain he had loved with all his hearts. 

Had he told her? Had he managed to elocute the words that had so occupied his thoughts? Whilst the hole she had left behind was ragged, he knew she had consumed him body and soul and left behind the kind of wound that even all of time and space could not fill. Such a wound was not born of mere companionship, he knew that – he had been in love enough times to know what it felt like when it was lost away, and he clenched his fists as he bent over the console, tears running silently down his face as he wept with rage and self-pity. 

He had hurt her, that much he recalled. On more than one occasion he had been callous with his words, and she had made her pain known to him. He had grown gentler around her as he learned from his missteps, and she had grown warmer in the presence of his kindness. She had been happy to be at his side, and he had been proud to have her there – this warrior human, strong yet vulnerable, empathic and understanding of others in a way that he was not. She had shaped him, and he had shaped her, but now he was alone and untethered, unsure of who to be or where to visit. He had been searching for her with the utmost diligence – in every outpost on every planet, drawn by legends and word of mouth, yet now he knew the truth. He had been chasing ghosts. Chasing a lie that he had told himself, because she was gone and he was adrift in a universe that no longer quite made sense. His head throbbed as he fought to regain his memories, and he was rewarded with a single flash of the girl in the diner – the girl he recalled, dimly, knowing was Clara – before pain lanced through his skull, as though in punishment for his pressing curiosity.

 _Immortality isn’t living forever, that’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying._   

His own words echoed back to him as he resolved, in that instant, to only travel alone. Regardless of his previous companions’ words to him, regardless of what they had thought, he could be alone. He would fall apart as he always did, but then he would not seek solace on Earth. He would wander, solitarily, and try to forget Clara Oswald.

 

* * *

 

He was not entirely surprised when Missy found him, exploring the markets of Space Glasgow with a forced sense of disinterest that he had spent months cultivating. Bill had disappeared into the crowds, and he was sat on the steps of a ruined basilica, watching the people thronging past when he felt a presence beside him. 

“Where’s the puppy?” came the Time Lady’s voice, and he sighed deeply, looking over to her with a sense of resignation. She had survived, of course. She always survived, even when others did not; he had lost Clara and yet Missy had lived on. 

“Not dead then.” 

“Not dead, no. Back and ready to play with yourself and your lovely little puppy-dog companion. Where did you put her?” 

“You mean Clara?” he asked, his heartrate accelerating as he realised what she was alluding to and what he would have to inform her of. 

“Yes, Clara. About two feet high and just as wide, all eyes and smiles and cheeks. Where is she? You didn’t let her off the lead, did you? You know how humans get overexcited without firm limits and boundaries.”

“She’s dead,” he said dully, the words raw and unfamiliar in his mouth. “She’s…” his throat closed up and he fell silent, tears burning at his eyes as the reality hit him. Missy placed one hand on his knee in a gesture he recognised as comfort, the gentle intimacy of the act surprising him. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, unusually restrained in her manner. “I… I didn’t…” 

“I know,” he shrugged, trying to look for a positive to focus on. “Suppose I should thank you, really… you brought us together…” 

“I did,” Missy concurred, looking through the crowds to where Bill was weaving towards them determinedly, a bag of shopping clutched under each arm. “Is she the new one?” 

“She is,” the Doctor chuckled a little as he watched his new companion beam at him warmly. “Bill.” 

“Good. You shouldn’t…”

“…be alone. I know. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be.”


End file.
